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Authors: Anna Sweeney

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BOOK: Deadly Intent
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‘She wasn't wearing walking shoes either,' said Darina. ‘So if she had to run from her attacker …'

‘I think she was drinking,' said Sal. ‘I'm pretty sure I got a whiff of alcohol from her, so maybe she fell when she tried to run. In fact, maybe she wasn't attacked at all, and just fell.'

‘Poor woman, she could have screamed for help and nobody would have heard her. The nearest house must be five or ten minutes walk away.'

Sal lifted the edge of the blanket and gazed at Maureen's high heels. ‘Well, whatever happened, you'd have to actually ask yourself what brought her to Beara in the first place. We're not exactly famed for the type of shopping and karaoke holiday I reckon she'd be into.'

Nessa let go of Maureen's hand and stood up. She held her counsel, but she had learned through her business that the reasons for people's holiday choices were not always obvious. If their relationship was strained, Maureen and Dominic may have decided to spend a week with a group of strangers rather than face each other silently across a hotel table each night.

‘I'm going to switch on the car's lights,' she said then. ‘I should have thought of it when I arrived, so that the ambulance people can damn well see where we are.'

A ribbon of sea shimmered between Beara's dark coastline and the Iveragh peninsula to the north. Nessa stood alone by the car for a few minutes, troubled by the evening's events. Large pale stones were scattered on the hills nearby, and in the glare of the headlights they appeared to her like bare bones protruding from the earth's skin. She shivered as she thought of how differently things might have turned out.

She looked back at the two young women lit up in the middle of the boreen. Their heads were bent towards one another as they talked. Sal was tall and shapely, her dark skin displaying her father's African origins. Next to her, Darina looked slight and washed out, her pale translucent skin framed by thick sandy hair. The landscape's black shadows encircled them.

Nessa's husband Patrick had left Ireland that very morning to travel to Malawi in southeastern Africa, where he had grown up. Whatever had befallen Maureen, and whatever its consequences, Nessa would have to deal with them alone. She also had several other guests to look after until Saturday morning. But meanwhile, it occurred to her that once Maureen was on her way to hospital, she should bring Darina back to the house to make sure she was OK. Then she could try to figure out her own ideas on what had happened.

Her solitary musings ended when the arrival of the ambulance and garda car broke the night's silence. The medics got to work quickly, organising a stretcher to carry Maureen the short distance to the top of the track. Meanwhile, the police busied themselves with photographs and measurements of the location. Just as the ambulance left and Nessa was hoping they could return home, Sergeant Conor Fitzmaurice started on a round of questions. What time had Maureen agreed to return for the evening meal? What time had Darina found her injured? Was there any reason beforehand that such an incident could happen?

They were still talking when a car door slammed loudly nearby and a man got out. They saw Dominic blinking in the lights, trying to take in the scene. He was heavily built, his belly flopping over his belt, and was out of breath as he hurried towards them.

‘I tried to phone her earlier,' he said. ‘I did my best to phone Maureen this afternoon.' He stared at the faces around him. ‘I should've gone looking for her when I heard nothing back. I should've known something was wrong.'

The sergeant stepped towards him. ‘Would you mind if I asked you a few quick questions before you head off to the hospital? I'm sure you'd like to be on your way—'

‘What I'd like right now is a proper explanation.' Dominic looked around again and then pointed a finger at Nessa. ‘I went off on my own for one day, that's all. One lousy day for myself, madam, and in my innocence I trusted
you
to keep an eye on your guests!'

Nessa had no chance to reply before Dominic launched into a longer tirade. ‘But then again, you had other things on your mind this week, isn't that so? You had a big shot visitor staying in your fine house, and you and your husband spent the week licking his boots, as far as I could see. You didn't give two damns that your gentleman visitor was whispering softly in Maureen's ear and that she started to believe, God help her, that he fancied a roll in the bushes with her? And now look what's happened!'

The sergeant tried to interrupt but Dominic had not finished. His lower lip quivered as he spoke. ‘You'll be hearing more about this, I promise you. It's not what I expected when I brought Maureen here on holiday. I call it negligence, and I'll tell my solicitor all about it if I have to.'

TWO
Thursday 17 September, 10.00 p.m.

C
louds were swelling in the western sky. Large and fat, they filled and billowed as they rose from the horizon. A bright sliver of moonlight separated them from the night's blackness.

Nessa watched a single cloud sweep ahead on its own. When the clamour of her guests got to her, she liked to escape to an unseen corner of the back garden. Just enough time to gaze at the sky and at the outstretched branches of the trees. Time to slow her thoughts, which were fizzing like demented flies tonight. She had spent the last hour and a half trying to get information from the district hospital in Bantry, attending to the rest of her guests and arranging for them to give statements to Sergeant Fitzmaurice, and all the while worrying about the implications of the episode.

Her eyes followed the course of her solitary cloud, swift and buoyant across the dark backdrop of the sky. But she was unable to shake off Dominic's outburst. She told herself it would come to nothing. He was upset, naturally enough, and needed to vent his feelings, but he was also clearly gripped by jealousy. Nessa was well aware of his target when he described a fellow guest as ‘a big shot visitor'. Oscar Malden was a wealthy businessman – and unlike Dominic, he was also a pleasant and courteous individual. It was hardly Nessa's business if he and Maureen had been flirting under Dominic's nose. What is more, if Dominic was so concerned about his wife, why did he go off fishing on his own?

But Nessa still wished she had paid more attention to Maureen, who had been hanging around the house that morning, moody and unsure of how to spend the day. Nessa was very busy, and she was also feeling the end-of-season weariness that September brought. So she had been relieved when Maureen finally reappeared from her room dressed to the nines and happy to accept Nessa's offer of a lift to the local village of Derryowen, half a mile down the hill. Nessa told her to text if she wanted a lift back later, but was quite glad to hear nothing more from her all day.

When Maureen had not turned up for dinner, two other guests reported seeing her at the Derryowen Hotel earlier, while they were drinking mid-morning coffee on the sea-facing terrace. Maureen had greeted them but went indoors, and soon afterwards, they saw Oscar arrive. Through a window, they noticed the pair having a conversation, but then Oscar left on his own. Maureen was still in the hotel bar a while later when the other two guests went off walking, so it was anybody's guess whether she and Oscar had agreed a rendezvous in the countryside. The whole thing was based on supposition – but if the very worst had happened and Oscar assaulted Maureen on the boreen, it was difficult to see how Nessa or anyone else could have prevented it.

As adults, all of the guests were responsible for their own safety, and in any case, they had been strongly advised not to go walking alone in unfamiliar places. So Dominic's accusation of negligence was way off the mark. But it was not the legalities that concerned Nessa so much as a feeling that if the week turned out badly, she and her husband Patrick had failed in their job to keep their guests as safe and as happy as possible.

She watched as the lone cloud drifted out of sight. A multitude of questions still weighed her down. How bad were Maureen's injuries? How soon could she give her own explanations to the gardai? Had Oscar been involved in the incident?

Nessa decided to allow herself five more minutes outdoors. She sat under a big oak tree, on a wooden seat Patrick had given her many years earlier as a present from Malawi. It was made of two pieces of dark wood elegantly fitted together, and as she stretched against its firm support, she reminded herself that at least she was not in a hospital waiting room with Dominic for company – eyes bulging with anger and garish jersey stretched tightly across his belly. She had offered to go to the hospital, of course, but Sergeant Fitzmaurice said that a colleague from Bantry station could call in instead, and pass on any news. But so far, Nessa had had no word from the colleague.

She took out her phone to write a text to Patrick, who had been on her mind all evening. His aunt in Malawi had been ill for several months and he had waited the whole summer for an opportunity to visit her. He had lived in Ireland for over twenty years, and indeed, his father's mother had been white and Irish, but most of his relatives were in Malawi. He had originally booked flights for the following Sunday – most of the guests would have left by then, and he would have no more guided walks to organise until the October bank holiday weekend.

But he was forced to change his booking at the last minute, because of a threat of strike action at an airport en route. His new flight from Cork airport was at eight o'clock on Thursday evening, three days earlier than planned. He had some business to do on his way to Cork and had left Beara in a hurry that morning. Nessa told herself it was pointless wishing he had delayed until after the weekend – that if only he had been at home, she might have paid more attention to Maureen.

‘I'd rather not leave you holding the fort on your own, Nessa,' he had said as he pored over internet timetables. ‘We're both so tired after the summer.'

‘You know I'll be absolutely fine,' she had replied. ‘You've been hopping with impatience for weeks so please don't think twice about it.'

She was acutely aware of how important the journey was to him. As an only child whose parents had been involved in political struggle, Patrick's earlier life had been difficult. His father had died in traumatic circumstances when he was a teenager and his aunt had been his rock of support. He had fretted about her ever since she became ill, and Nessa knew that the sooner he got on a plane the better.

The back garden sloped down to the house, which was called Cnoc Meala, an Irish name that translated as ‘honey hill' and also ‘sweet hill'. They had picked the name when they heard that a previous owner used to keep bees in a field above the garden. Nessa always felt a surge of pride when she contemplated the house, which they had renovated completely after buying it almost three years earlier.

Moving from Dublin to the far reaches of the southwest coast had been an upheaval for the whole family: swapping her career as a newspaper journalist and Patrick's as a graphic artist for the uncertain demands of tourism, and parting their two children, Sal and Ronan, from the familiar routines of urban living. For almost two decades, Nessa had loved her work in Dublin, and had made quite an impact with a number of investigative stories; but one morning soon after her mother's death, she had been struck by an overwhelming feeling that life was too short to spend it all in one place. She and Patrick had occasionally fantasised about living in a scenic and rural community, and while figuring out the move took them some time, Nessa was sure that Cnoc Meala was now their home for life. They had decided to use the same name for their holiday activity business, and in spite of setting it up in the teeth of economic recession, they had survived and paid the bills so far.

It was easy to praise the attractions of the Beara peninsula in their publicity blurb. Splendid mountains and panoramic seascapes, hidden valleys and hedgerows sweet with birdsong were all to be found in abundance between the great bays of Bantry and Kenmare. Even the unreliable weather could be portrayed as part of nature's colourful drama. The hard part was to convince tourists to base themselves a good distance from airports and major roads. There was also the challenge of group holidays that was not spelt out in any brochure – getting a random assortment of strangers to gel together and enjoy each other's company for a week.

When things went really well, laughter and chat filled the house until late into the evenings. At other times, Nessa and Patrick settled for a general sense of contentment in the group. But once or twice a year, they found themselves with a few cantankerous guests who could spoil the fun for everyone, and who had to be diverted, humoured and quietly managed all week long.

However, Nessa had had no inkling of trouble ahead when eleven people met for drinks in the living room on the previous Sunday. She had certainly wondered whether Oscar Malden would be difficult to please, because as a well-known entrepreneur and man-about-town, he might find Cnoc Meala rather low-key for his tastes. She had noticed straight off how readily he became the centre of attention. He was not tall or flashy in his appearance, but he had that magnetism that drew others to him and made them feel he was paying special attention to every word they uttered. Of course, he was an old hand at working a room, meeting, greeting and making conversation. Little wonder, really, that Dominic was jealous.

Nessa heard the wind rustling in the oak leaves. It was time to return to the fray. She told herself again that everything would be fine, just as soon as Maureen recovered and Oscar could show that he had played no part in her mishap. Most of the guests seemed to be enjoying their holiday – eight of them in the house, along with a family of three in a self-catering lodge in the grounds – and until tonight's events, nobody had hinted at a complaint.

Sal called out to her from the back door of the house. Nessa looked back over the text she had jotted to her husband. His plane should have landed at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam by late evening, and he would probably check his mobile before his overnight connection to Johannesburg. She did not want to worry him, however, so she had just said that Maureen had an accident but that everything was under control. In a day or two, she could fill him in on the outcome of police enquiries.

BOOK: Deadly Intent
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